Let the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA)
know that you care about farm animals and want them protected from
preventable fires, just as the NFPA has commendably recommended. Urge the
NFPA to deny the industry appeal and uphold its proposed amendment. UPC’s
letter follows this Contact Information.

In July, 15 industry groups including US Poultry and
Egg Association, National Chicken Council, National Turkey Federation, and
United Egg Producers appealed the NFPA’s decision
to require fire sprinklers and smoke control systems in farm animal
facilities, claiming these fire safety devices are too expensive and
of no benefit to production. It’s cheaper to let animals and buildings burn
up and collect the insurance.

The National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) passed an amendment in
June requiring farm animal housing facilities to be equipped with fire
sprinklers and smoke control systems. The NFPA – the world’s leading
advocate of fire prevention – sought to expand its 150 Standard for Fire and
Life Safety in Animal Housing Facilities to cover farm animal confinement
buildings, in which tens of thousands of birds and mammals suffocate and
burn to death each year in the United States. In May, for example, 500,000
hens burned to death on a Colorado egg farm. In June, 7,000 turkeys burned
to death in a Butterball facility in North Carolina.

In July, 15 industry groups including US Poultry and Egg Association,
National Chicken Council, National Turkey Federation, and United Egg
Producers appealed the NFPA’s decision to require fire sprinklers and smoke
control systems in farm animal facilities, claiming these fire safety
devices are too expensive and of no benefit to production. It’s cheaper to
let animals and buildings burn up and collect the insurance.

The industry appeal is likely to be heard in August. Please let the
National Fire Protection Association know that you care about farm animals
and want them protected from preventable fires, just as the NFPA has
commendably recommended. Urge the NFPA to deny the industry appeal and
uphold its proposed amendment. UPC’s letter follows this Contact
Information.

United Poultry Concerns Letter to the National Fire Protection
Association

On behalf of United Poultry Concerns, a nonprofit
organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment of
domestic fowl, I am writing to commend the NFPA for approving an amendment
to the 150 Standard for Fire & Life Safety in Animal Housing that would
require installations of smoke and sprinkler control systems in animal
housing facilities that contain, without any means of escape, thousands of
chickens, turkeys, ducks, pigs and other farm animals, designated as
“Category B.”

We are dismayed to learn, however, that the NFPA’s
commendable and much needed fire protection amendment for these animals has
been withdrawn in response to an industry coalition opposing it. We
respectfully urge the NFPA to uphold its original decision to require
installations of smoke and sprinkler control systems in Category B animal
facilities.

Poultry and livestock producer opposition to such
minimal protections for their defenseless animals as sprinklers and smoke
control systems should be resisted by the NFPA. Please do not give in to
industry’s preference for allowing thousands of animals to endure the terror
and physical agony of suffocation and being burned to death in a fire-trap
building, rather than installing the fire protection systems the NFPA has
rightly recommended.

Here are just two examples, in 2012, of the horror
endured by tens of thousands of birds in industry fires of the type and
frequency that the NFPA amendment could mitigate if not completely
eliminate:

“Fire at turkey house ruled accidental” in North
Carolina (killing 7,000 turkeys), June 13, 2012
http://www2.wnct.com/news/2012/jun/13/9/7000-turkeys-killed-morning-fire-ar-2353778/

We urge the National Fire Protection Association to
reverse its decision to withdraw the amendment at the behest of industries
that prefer to let animals suffer and die horribly in preventable fires each
year and collect the insurance, rather than to invest in a fire protection
system. Please uphold your original amendment. We look forward to your
response. Thank you for your attention.

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